Path to a 100 hour week?
Hey all,
Not in IB nor have I had any banking experience but thinking about it in the future. I was curious, over the course of 7 days, how do you guys hit the 100 hours?? I usually work ~12 hours per day in my current, along with 4-6 hours per weekend. This means my weeks top out at MAX like 80 or so hours (usually even lighter because Friday's are really chill). What does the daily distribution of hours (at its worst) look like in IB? What are the tasks that are occupying that time? Of the hours worked, is there a decent % of downtime following comments being turned?
100 hour weeks are pretty insane, think people here are vastly overestimating how common they are in banking. That’s 16 hours a day (10am-2am) 5 days a week with 20 hours on a weekend. Maybe possible if there’s something blowing up on a deal, but definitely not a regular week.
The issue in banking is so much of the day is spent on nonsense calls that you really aren’t able to get into work much until the evening. Then, turning comments on a deck or working in the model can easily take a good chunk of time, which turns into a long day when you aren’t starting any of it until 6pm
It's not that insane... you hit 100 if your working both Sat / Sun full days and your week is packed with deals.
100 includes food and cab home
That number is very common in my group. 9-1+ M-TH, 9-8 F, 10-10+ S-S.
As an associate, that usually means 8-2 Monday - Thursday, 9-7 on Friday and 20 hours spread over Saturday/Sunday.
for those kind of weeks, at any given moment 3 people will be chasing you to get something done and you’ll take calls from seniors while showering/going to the bathroom to save time.
How do you have time to just exist? Like basic necessities...groceries, cooking, cleaning? Also, how frequent is that schedule that you laid out?
order food so no cooking or groceries.
Clean on weekends. Probably like this once a month on average
There are two things you can do as a junior banker (outside of work) that can vastly improve your quality of life (at least it did for me when I started these things):
1) hire someone to clean your house/apartment. It doesn’t have to be more than twice a month (every other week). It’s really all you need if you do simple things like make your bed every day and stay on top of your dishes (put them in the dishwasher as soon as you’re done using them) bc you’re not spending a ton of time at home anyways. Even better if you have a roommate you can split the cost with. Total cost is about $200 a month ($100/person) for the entire apartment - very worth it.
2) find a rotation of restaurants you enjoy that are HEALTHY for you. It pains me to watch people eat the way they do, and if they changed to a good diet they would see a vast improvement in their life, both physically and mentally.
I’m an A2A associate.
Monday - Thursday is usually 9am - 3:30am
Friday 9 - 9
Saturday is chill with only about 3-5 hrs of work
Sunday usually a full 10am - 2-3 am
Days are pretty packed and my vps will text me directly if I don’t answer something within 5 -10 minutes
Not gonna lie I’ve been showering once a week most times since I’m still WFH.
Been non-stop like this for almost 2 months now. Had one week where I only worked 80 hrs. It felt so amazing that it gave me hope that maybe I can keep doing this if hours come down eventually.
Do you imagine getting back in the office will help? Also, on those M-Th days, can you slip out for 2 hours to get a workout in the evening if work is slow, even if you know it will pick back up?
I think in some ways it will help, but it’ll be worse in other ways. I definitely am more stressed around people and commute is going to suck up so much time. Also need to get ready and be presentable vs just rolling out of bed.
Lmao if had even 1 hr every other day, that would be amazing. Unfortunately, most days there’s never more than 5-10 minutes of down time. I have to lie to my team and say I have a call or something to be able to take a shit or shower most of the time.
Holy fuck how is this okay? Unless it's a select few places, I don't even think the pay as aso1 is enough to get one through those kind of days
Yeah honestly just doing it for the comp right now. Hoping for gangbusters bonuses at the end of the year to take me over 400k
SHOWERING 1X A WEEK LMAO
It's so inhumane LOL.
There's a difference between making personal sacrifices for a competitive, high-paying career
vs. being treated like a fucking caged animal.
The 100-hour weeks were definitely pretty common right before I left IB around April. However, it was the result of a perfect shit storm of high turnover, white-hot market, SPAC boom and the general consensus that seniors cared even less about your health during WFH. I was also in a group that was pretty sweaty pre-COVID.
Mon-Thurs was 800AM-230AM or so (would sleep 4.5 hours 3AM-730AM)
Fri was 800AM-1000PM
Saturday was about 5 hours of work
Sunday was about 10AM-230AM
If turnover didn't hit us like a bag full of bricks, I probably could've kept things around 90 hours, but my last few months in IB were definitely 100ish on average.
What the actual fuck lol do you predict hours will be more tapered following return to offices / with all of the news surrounding the current workplace in banking and having it so tightly under the microscope?
Did the big lateral hiring wave help lessen things down or did dealflow slow in august 2021
Not sure, since I left before they brought on more lateral hires. However, intern return offer rate was pretty low for my bank Summer 2020, which made me fearful of the hours getting worse. I think the big issue when we return to office will be that the seniors know everyone has a rock-solid WFH setup now, and will have no problem abusing that on weekends/when you get home from office. Even vacations were sort of rough with WFH, but we'll see how it plays out. They definitely are not giving out this higher comp for nothing, though. The hours are more brutal than ever before and they know this.
I don’t know of any group that has seen meaningful improvement since the wave of hiring started. As more people are coming in, more people are leaving following bonus pay out. Add on the requirement of bringing the new hires up to speed on internal processes and it’s possible even more work.
Reading these type of posts make me think PE is such a better job than IB (though still in the grand scheme terrible WLB). At a reputable UMM (latest fund size $7bn+)
M-T 9-9pm
Friday 9-6pm
Sunday: 3-4 hours
Total: 60-70 hours, except for deal time when it goes up to 90-100 (probably once every 6-7 weeks)
whats comp like
Near $300k all-in. So a slight haircut to banking associatss
I’ve had 1 100 hour week in my first year (yeah I track my hours like a crazy person). That week I had 3 very active deals and a pitch. One of the deals required so much attention during “normal” workday hours and the other was usually more active in the evening so I didn’t have time to get to do work uninterrupted until the vps started logging off at like 10pm. went approximately like this:
monday: 9am-3:30am (18.5hrs)
Tuesday: 9am-3:30am (18.5hrs)
wednesday: 7:30am-10:30pm (15hrs)
Thursday: 8am-4:30am (20.5hrs)
Friday: 8:30am-11:30pm (15hrs)
Saturday: no work
Sunday: 11am-2am (15hrs)
For a grand total of 102.5
It sucked so bad
what was an average week for you/what were you averaging?
Average since I’ve started is ~70 hours but had a slow ramp up. Last 6 months has been closer to 80
When this happens to me its usually still no work on saturdays and just getting killed 18 hour days mon - thurs (9-3) then like the regular 15 hours friday and sunday (9-12). Cant wait to do these when adding in the office commute…
It’s not common. I would argue on average, even a fast deal you are going to see 9am-1am (16 hours) Sunday-Thursday so 80 hours. Then Friday 9am-7pm (10) hours and a few hours on Saturday. So 93ish hours and you likely have a an hour break each day waiting for comments in reality. But a hellish week can be 9am-4am or more realistically 1 4am the others 9am-2am and working both Saturday and Sunday which would get you around 100-110.
I think if you are working 100+ hours there was mismanagement somewhere that occurred or a really insufferable client.
hit the desk 15 months ago and have only pulled 2 true 100 hour weeks. They sucked ass but I was so busy the days kinda just blended together and it went by pretty quick and afterwards my staffer told me to log off at noon the following friday. No idea how all you mf's are pulling this shit on the reg, godspeed to all of you. Seeing the sun come up as I waited for like 20 data tables to refresh was a low point.
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